Gender Gap

An Italian study showed that women actively change their traveling routes to avoid certain situations that are deemed dangerous, or change the times they travel to avoid traveling during ‘dangerous’ times.Coppola, Pierluigi & Silvestri, Fulvio. (2021). Gender Inequality in Safety and Security Perceptions in Railway Stations. In this study they specifically named the ‘gender gap’, being that men don’t experience the same feelings of unsafety surrounding public transport and stations. At large the gender gap exemplifies the difference between men and women on various levels, for example when it comes to salary or their role within their family dynamics. It is important that the gender gap is discussed within the theme of ‘being unsafe’, as women actively change their traveling behavior, most often to circumvent dangerous situations. The situations where the interviewed women felt most safe was with more people around, because they thought this would lower the chances of a negative experience.

This shows that women don’t just feel unsafe at stations, but also actively change the way they travel to feel safer. The Italian study concluded that the mobility of female travelers, meaning how freely they feel they are able to travel, is significantly lower than the mobility of their male counterparts. In this instance, women become responsible to prevent their own victimization, while they are actually the victims. This is also called victim blaming, a process in which the victim is deemed responsible for their own safety - when something happens, it is their fault. Nighttime can be especially creepy and ominous at the station, even though there might be the same amount of people as during the day.